1Password Walkthrough - Is 1Password the BEST Password Manager in 2022

Hey guys, welcome to a new unscripted format here on All Things Secured, where I wanna walk through some of the software that I use most often for my privacy and security, let you see how I use it. So that way you can make maybe a better, more informed decision about whether or not it's something that would work for you and whether or not you like the way that it looks and feels. So today I'm gonna start off with one of my favorite pieces of security software, 1Password. So what I've done here as you can see on my screen is I've created a test vault. So that you can kind of see, hopefully everything in here that you see won't have any value whatsoever, if you were to try to see it or if you were to accidentally run across one of these passwords. Because one of the advantages of using a password manager, any password manager, is that when you have a password manager helping you create passwords, they will by nature be more secure. They will be stronger passwords that are longer, that use more different characters than you would probably use on your own. And there are a number of different password managers out there. I'll explain to you why I prefer 1Password as we go along, but let's go ahead and just look in at the software to start. So you'll notice here that I'm in my test vault and what I've got is I've got a number of just test accounts that I've created online. Where I could go in and I could actually create a new login or a secure note or credit card or all these things if I wanted to, or I can do it while I'm browsing and while I'm creating new accounts, which I may show you in a little bit. I think that's one of the biggest differences between using a dedicated password manager and just using your browser as a password manager. Something like Keychain for Safari or even Chrome can save your passwords for you. And I don't really like having my browser have that kind of power over my data. I would much prefer to separate it out. But one of the advantages of using a password manager is that you can store more than just passwords. So for example, I've gotten here that I've stored my passport. Obviously this isn't my real passport number, but you can see here I have stored my passport with all the data in it. And I could even store a picture of the passport. In my real vault for 1Password, I have every single one of my family members passports, visas while we live here in Thailand, copies of that. And you wouldn't believe how many times I get asked, hey, I need a copy of your passport or I need a copy of your visa or hey, I need a copy of your driver's license. And instead of me trying to fumble around, I just go onto my phone and I look it up on the 1Password app on my phone and then I can download it and email it to them if I needed to. So that's really convenient being able to store all of these things in an encrypted vault that not even 1Password has access to because I have my secret key. Again, we'll get to that in a moment. First, let's continue looking around here. So if you look, we've got Watchtower. I could create favorite items if I wanted to, notes that I wanted to always be able to go back to and reference without having to search for it necessarily. And then you can do categories, right? So I've got my logins, I've got my secure notes where let's say I kept my checking routing number so that whenever that's asked for, I don't have to log into my bank account. I can just pull it up on my phone or my computer. You can store credit cards if you wanted to. So that way, when you go to pay for something, you can just one-click and have all of that information autofill. And same with identities, you could have your address and your name autofill on all these things. Of course, this is gonna require the extension on Chrome, Firefox, or any Chromium browser, which 1Password has that extension that I'll show you. Passports, you can even store wireless routers. And as I've shown you right here, you can store a whole host of different things from software licenses to rewards programs to outdoor licenses, whatever you want. And then from that, you can even just edit each one of these individually. You can tag these if you wanted to. Honestly, I don't use tags that much. To be quite honest with you, I generally don't open up the software very often. I generally just use the extension on the browser or I use the app on my phone to automatically fill in any passwords or automatically create new passwords for myself. But one of the advantages of using a password manager here is 1Password calls Watchtower. Every password manager calls it their own thing. Watchtower is basically, I would say it's just an algorithm that looks out and makes sure that your passwords are as strong as they should be. So for example, well, it shows me that I have weak passwords for my bank and for just this unsecured example. So let's look at what this is. I can reveal right here, and this is a password. Now, obviously that's not my bank password, but if it were, 1Password is telling me that's not a secure password and they would be correct. So what I would have to do is go log into my bank, change my password and then store that again with 1Password and they make it very easy to do that. Same with my unsecured example where if I were to reveal this, it's just password. Anytime that you have password as your password, you are doing something very wrong and you can actually have it shown in large type. That's one of the things that I like, especially about the mobile app is showing that in large type. The reason is because the one con, or there's a couple of cons, but the one big con to using a password manager app is the fact that whenever I wanna use a password on a smart TV, let's say that I want to log into Netflix and let's say that I've got a super secure Netflix password. I don't know why you would want a super secure Netflix password, but let's just say that it's insanely complicated. That makes it very difficult because there is no 1Password app for your smart TV. So unless you have Apple TV where you can take and type it in on your phone or password copy and paste from 1Password on your phone, which that's one example where it would work. But I did have one time where I had a Google Android based smart TV and it wanted my Google password in order to log in. And we're gonna put aside the debate about whether or not I should be using a Google enabled TV or even an Apple one for that matter. And just say that it took me about 10 minutes because my Google password is extremely complicated and it's at least 25 characters long. And those characters are the ones that you have to go searching for. So I literally had my phone next to me with the large type. And then I was going through with my remote control. It was the most painstaking process, certainly not worth it. But that is one of the hard things about using strong passwords for anything that you would access on your TV. So if you were to be creating a Netflix password, my suggestion would be to use something that's not insanely complicated. So that way, if you did have to type it in on your TV or some other device where there isn't an app that you could do that pretty easily. All right, so let's go back in here. Again, looking at unsecured, this is an unsecured website. What that means is if you look here, if the website itself is not HTTPS, then that would be an example of a website where you wouldn't want to be sending over sensitive data like your password and all of that stuff. And so this is just telling me that I've created a password on an unsecured website. And if you ever have any of those, you either need to change it over to HTTPS and see if that works. Some websites still don't have a secured website option. And if they don't have that secured website option, then I would question whether or not you should continue using that particular online account. Maybe you need to, but if you do, then I would connect with that company and ask them why they're not HTTPS secured. Another thing that you can do is use two-factor authentication within one password. Now, there's a debate about whether this is a good thing or not, because two-factor authentication is meant to separate between different types of authentication, right? You've got your password as one, and then you've got your second factor of authentication as another separate means of authenticating that you are who you say you are. So if you put those two together, then you're in a little bit of trouble, right? So here's my thoughts on this, because I do use two-factor authentication through one password, but only on those accounts that aren't incredibly important and sensitive for me. So what that means is, let's say Facebook, and if any type of investment account or anything uses 2FA, I don't put that inside of one password, but if, let's say Pinterest or something like that has 2FA as an option, I really don't care that much. What I'm doing by storing my 2FA codes into one password is basically saying, if accounts get hacked and someone gets access to my password, they won't automatically be able to get into my accounts because they'll still need 2FA. Now, if someone were to somehow hack into one password, or at least my vault, then maybe we've got a little bit of problem, but like I said, it's Pinterest. I'm not keeping my 2FA codes for my sensitive logins. So that's the way that I do that. If you wanted to add in 2FA, you can take, and you go down to this section field right here, and you look for one-time password. This is the type of password. So what you can do here is you can do one of two things. You can either scan for a QR code. If they, you know, you can do that on your phone. You can even do it here on your desktop if you enabled that, the software to be able to scan the screen. Or every time that you're given the opportunity to do a one-time passcode, right under that QR code, there's either a code, you know, just like a 16-digit code, alphanumeric code, or there's something that says, would you like to manually enter it? You just click there, and then you paste that into here. And so when you do that and you click save, it will automatically save that code, and you'll see it come up as a code with the six-digit number and a little timer around it. All right, and finally, if you were to have any type of expiring passwords, Watchtower's gonna let you know if there are any compromised websites. So any websites that have had a hack since you've changed your password, then they're gonna let you know which ones those are. So that's what the software itself, at least on the desktop, looks like. Let's go ahead and open up my browser, and see how that works with the extension. Now, the extension is something that can be found in, once you've subscribed to 1Password in your account, they'll have links to the extension, to the apps, everything that you need to download. And you just sign into that extension using your sign-in and your master password. Now, when you first create a 1Password account, you will be asked to create a master password. That master password needs to be the strongest password that you have that you can remember without having to write it down anywhere, because that's the point here, is that it's not gonna be written down, it's gonna be something you know, and only you know, so that when you use it, that master password unlocks everything else in your vault. So if I were to go in and want to sign into Netflix here, I've got this right here, this 1Password extension, and I can go in and auto-fill, or if I were to have clicked in here, it would show as an option, and now I can just click sign in. The same happens if I wanted to create a new password. I could ask 1Password to generate a new password and then save that for my Netflix account, even if I already had that account existing. So this browser extension is something that I use all the time. It works especially well on, you know, just the major browsers that you might be using, and there haven't been any problems for me in being able to auto-fill all the stuff that I want to auto-fill, whether that's credit cards, addresses, and definitely all of my usernames and passwords for when I log in. You can also jump in if you wanted to on the website and access your passwords without having to download any of the apps. So for example, if you had to access your passwords in a place where you didn't have your phone or you didn't have your computer available, you had to use a public computer, this isn't advisable, but in an emergency situation, you could go in and access these passwords. You would again have to put in your master password for the account that you have, and then you would gain access to that. So now you see, I've got all the vaults. I've got this vault, my private vault, my test vault, and my shared vault. I'm gonna stop here for just a moment and explain to you the difference between these because I have the family plan. This is something I really like about 1Password. They kind of pioneered the family plan, or at least they did in my opinion when I was looking through it. It was something that didn't seem to be very common in the password manager software suites before, but now everybody seems to have copied this where I have my wife on 1Password as well, and I'm trying to get my parents on 1Password. I'm trying to get everybody in our family on 1Password. So that way it makes it extremely easy to share items. So we share our Netflix account. And so I don't keep my Netflix login in my private, I keep it in my shared. I keep our banking login in our shared for me and my wife. And if I wanted to, I could create a different shared one that's for my whole family, including my parents, and I can share. So that ability to be able to share your passwords without necessarily worrying about whether or not my parents are writing it down or my wife is using a less secure password than I would want her to, we can share that. And now anytime I change it, I don't have to worry about trying to change hers. We share that vault. So when she logs in and needs to log into the bank account, even if I've changed that password, it changes for her when she logs into her 1Password. Does that make sense? It's really convenient and something that I really like about 1Password. Okay, two more things before I jump into the cons and then show you my phone for just a moment. So one of the things that I really have liked about 1Password is just their forward thinking in looking ahead and finding out what kind of partnerships and integrations they can have that would really benefit us as users. One of them being privacy.com. You've heard me talk about virtual credit cards before and it's something that I've really enjoyed there. You can actually sign up. This is obviously only for US residents only. So if you're watching this right now and you're outside of the US, you can kind of disregard this for just a moment. If you're in the US and you're a US resident, you can sign up for privacy.com and then mask your credit cards by just creating new ones anytime that you need them. And with a free version, you can get up to, I think, 10 different virtual credit cards. And 1Password, if you integrate with your privacy.com account, will automatically create those merchant-specific virtual credit cards the moment that you want to check out. So let's say you're trying to check out on Amazon or Walmart or something and it asks for a credit card, you can create a new credit card that is merchant-specific and maybe even one-time use only. So that way, once that particular credit card is used for Amazon or Walmart, it can't be used anywhere else and you could even close it that moment after you use the credit card and there wouldn't be any problems. And that way, you're securing your financial information by not giving out your actual credit card number. You're giving out a virtual one that you have more control over. It doesn't require you to talk to your bank and ask them to send you a new credit card, which could take weeks. It's something where you can log into privacy.com and just close it immediately or limit how much can be used on that credit card. So I really love the fact that they have that integration with privacy.com. They've also integrated with FastMail to allow you to mask emails. So what that means is if you're signing up for a new service and you don't wanna give them your actual email address, well, then you could just give them an alias. There are a lot of different services that allow you to do that. StartMail is a private email that gives you unlimited aliases. But as far as 1Password's concerned, they have this integration with FastMail that allows you to create those aliases on the go as you're going. The only downside to that that I didn't really appreciate is there really isn't a free version of that. So you have to pay for FastMail in order to use that. And I just wasn't really into it. I tried it out and I decided that the FastMail integration wasn't something that I was super interested to continue using. But I do like that they're trying to pioneer these new partnerships with different companies that are tangentially related to what we're doing whenever we're logging into different accounts, masking our email address, masking our virtual credit cards. So that's something that's really cool that you won't find with Dashlane, LastPass, and all these other password managers. And one of the reasons that I've made 1Password my recommended password manager, and they don't pay me to say that. The downsides to using 1Password that I'll mention for just a moment before we dive into my mobile device is that there is no live chat support. You can go in and you can ask them. They've got a forum, a community forum where you can ask questions. You can email, but there is no live chat. So if you have an immediate problem or an immediate question, or you can't get into your account, they've got tons of just articles and help articles that could get you through that, hopefully. But if you do have a unique situation where you're just having to figure something out, they won't have live chat available for you, even if you're a paying subscriber. Speaking of paying, they don't have a free tier. So whereas you've got a lot of these other password managers that give you a free version, 1Password doesn't do that. They just give you, at least right now as I'm recording this, a 14-day free trial. Now I understand that because quite frankly, a lot of these others that give you that free version, it is limited. Usually they'll limit the number of online accounts that you can use to like 50. I've got 450. You probably have more than 100, whether you realize it or not. So it's more of a freemium thing where they're just trying to sell you into the free so that they can upgrade you into a paid version. So you're gonna pay for it anyway. The 14-day free trial for 1Password gives you access to the whole thing so that you can upload as many. You can take and export from your Chrome browser or from Keychain and import it into 1Password and see how it works and use all of your online logins and not just 50 of them. Or some of the free password managers restrict you from being able to sync between your devices. You can use it on your computer, but you can't use it on your phone unless you pay. And that's, again, it's just one of those limitations designed to make you pay. And really you should pay, right? This is a piece of software. Somebody has to develop it. Somebody has to keep this stuff up with all of the different upgrades and OS and all that stuff. So, I mean, we're not talking about a lot of money here. If you're really desperate and just need something free, then maybe 1Password isn't the right one for you. But for goodness sakes, it's not that much money. Go ahead and just sign up for a short subscription. All right, let's go ahead and take a look at 1Password on my mobile device, right? This is gonna look the same whether you're on iOS for an iPhone or whether you're on Android or whether you're on an iPad on a bigger device. It's all gonna look the same, but I can use my master password or after I've already signed in with my master password, I can set up for Face ID, which I will do right here. And so that way I don't have to necessarily take and type in my master password every single time. And it also keeps it a little bit secure from anybody that maybe, let's just take, let's say takes my phone and tries to use it, tries to get all access to my vaults here. So again, we've got all this stuff. I'm gonna go ahead and show you my test vault, which again, shows all of these where I can log in, I can look and then reveal. This is a test password. That's the large text or I can have it reveal just in regular plain text right here. You can tag it. If you were to update, this is something very interesting and this has happened to me before. You'll notice here that we've got previously used passwords. If you update, let's say you change your password and something just like didn't go right, they still have record of some of your previous ones if you need to use it. And I've had to use it before. That has happened where something just didn't go right and I had to tell them my previous password in order to gain access to my account. And thankfully 1Password had stored that previous password. Again, you also have access to passports, to your wireless routers that you could share if you needed to, and then to secure notes that you can keep and update as you wanted to. And anything that I do on my phone is gonna update on my computer as well and any other device where I use 1Password. So the great thing about doing that is if I go into my settings and then I set up, let's say password, oops, sorry. And let's say I set up a password, autofill passwords. So you're looking for autofill passwords here and you can set up which application will autofill passwords. In this case, obviously I wanna use 1Password. More than likely before you set up 1Password, it's gonna default to iCloud Keychain, or if you were to have Dashlane or others or something like that, or just Firefox, you could default to using that, but I'm going to use 1Password. And so what that means, if I wanna log into Netflix, what it's gonna ask me to do is it's gonna ask me to sign in. So when I click here, you're gonna see I've got this passwords right above my keyboard. So when I click that, it's gonna verify by my face ID and then I can click where test email and it's gonna autofill all that. Look at that, so much easier. You don't have to type anything in. It makes logging into your accounts on your mobile devices so much faster and very easy and convenient to do. So now you're not pulling out that pad and trying to remember exactly which one you used before. You're just taking and having it autofill, using your face ID as the reason or the way that you authenticate who you are. All right, so that's how you use it on your phone. There are obviously many other things that we could go over there, but one thing I did wanna share, and it's a question that I get often from people, which is, whoa, I'm keeping all of my most sensitive data in one place. Isn't that insecure? Like, isn't that a bad idea? And there are two things I have to say about that. First of all, the number one thing that you need to understand is that when you're using a password manager, this is true, not just for one password, but for most all the password managers that I know of. You're using what's known as a secret key, zero knowledge encryption. So what that means is you're encrypting your vault with your master password, and then that vault gets uploaded to, let's say, one password servers, and that's how they sync between your different devices. But you alone have your secret key that they give you whenever you first create your account. One password does not store that secret key, so that even if someone were to hack in to one password servers, they don't have the ability. One password, even if someone were to come in and just, at gunpoint, tell somebody in the one password offices to unlock so-and-so's password vault, they literally cannot do it because they don't have your secret key. So that secret key that's different from your master password, but both of those together are what secure your accounts so that as it's being moved through the cloud and to your different devices, you don't have to worry about losing access or at least giving over access to your vaults to somebody that may be hacking one password. So the idea of what if one password gets hacked, that shouldn't worry you because if they get hacked, which they haven't, and I don't see why they would, it wouldn't be a problem because they don't have your secret key, and that secret key is what really gives access to that vault. The second thing I would say is this. I've done a video about what I call a double-blind password. Other people refer to it as salting your passwords. What it means is this. Whenever I store a password for my most sensitive accounts, hear me clearly, this isn't for every account, but for my most sensitive accounts, I don't store the actual password in one password. All right, so what does that mean? All right, so for my banking, for example, I don't store my actual password. I have one password create a strong password of about 16 characters, and then after I create that, have them autofill it and save it, I add an additional four to 10 characters that only I know. I call it a double-blind password because I don't know the first half, and my password manager, 1Password, doesn't know the second half that only I know. So when you combine those two together, that gives me access to my account, but if someone were to hack into my 1Password account and try to log in, if they actually hacked into my 1Password account and you tried to log into my bank, you would get an error because the password that's stored in 1Password for my bank is not my actual password. You would now have to hack into my head as well in order to get into that. Again, this is only for my most secure, so my financial accounts, my email. I even do it for Facebook because there seems to be nowadays, it's a lot harder to recover from somebody hacking your Facebook account. And then of course, my bank, that kind of fits in with any of the financial institutions. All of those, I use a double-blind password. And if you wanna learn more about that, go ahead and watch the video about double-blind passwords to see more about what I'm talking about. Okay, so that is my kind of, I guess, review of 1Password and walkthrough of the software. I've done a lot more related to 1Password in the past. You can look up those videos, but this is the most up-to-date. If you have any questions whatsoever, go ahead and leave those in the comments below. I'll do my best to answer any of those questions. And if you decide to use 1Password, you could support this channel and what I'm doing by using my affiliate link that you can see probably right here, as well as in the description and in the comment. Thanks so much for taking time and have a great day.